|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Sacred Arts of the Qur'an: Calligraphy: Calligraphy, the first Qur'anic art of interest to this study, enjoys indisputable prominence among the Islamic arts. Indeed, "calligraphy is the premier Islamic art within its own culture."8 How can this distinguished status be explained? Unveiling the genesis of the Arabic script and its development before and after the rise of Islam casts light on the role of the Qur'an in ameliorating the art of Arabic writing in general and of Arabic calligraphy in particular. Prevailing linguistic theory traces the roots of the Arabic language to the Semitic languages of the lands to the north of the Arab peninsula. More specifically, its invention is attributed to the Nabataeans, an Arab people who established a powerful kingdom in Petra (contemporary southern Jordan) in the first century B.C. and excelled in trade with other provinces in Greater Syria and northwestern Arabia. While the corpus of their original language derived from the Aramaic script, their language set the stage for developing the Arabic language,9 which came to be known as North Arabic.10 North Arabic is traceable to the Nabataean alphabet and was buttressed later by diacritical and vowel marks derived from the Syriac alphabet, which itself was a form of Aramaic.11 Samples of North Arabic scripts are scant indeed, but from those that remain we can see the script's graphic coarseness, a peculiarity that echoes the evolutionary poise of the language a few centuries before Islam. The Arabic inscription of Imruµ' al Qays at Namarah (328 C.E.) and the inscription at Umm al Jimaµl (sixth century C.E.)12 are two rare samples. These inscriptions, which lack any signs of beauty and order as well as the constructional elements of individual letters and words needed for the integrity of communication, exhibit a pronounced ungainliness. Apart from the script, writing as a craft possessed a low stature in the pre-Islamic language arts of Arabia. This situation was in sharp contrast with the spoken language, which concurrently asserted such remarkable eloquence that it has been held in high esteem in Arabic literature ever since. Ironically, writing was shunned by the very orators and poets who prided themselves on their oral performances. With such a linguistic background, the beginnings of Arabic calligraphy under the auspices of Islam raised a great deal of curiosity. One views with awe the pace of the calligraphic arts's maturation under the guiding hand of Islam. What were the elements in Islam that led to the enhancement of the Arabic calligraphic arts, and did this enhancement require, as a prerequisite, a reformation of the Arabic script? At this juncture, however, it is posited that the arousal of the need to write the Qur'an thrust the development of the calligraphic arts forward and that such a development was based on a sustained reformation of the Arabic script. The revelations were not written and compiled in book form during the life of the Prophet. Rather, a dual approach was employed to preserve the text. First, revelations were memorized by the h\uffaµz\, companions of the Prophet endowed with intellect, piety, and known to have command of Arabic. Further, revelations were recorded on whatever appropriate surfaces were available, such as fragments of stone or bones.13 With the rapid expansion of the Islamic state, concern for the revelations' integrity flagged. On the other hand, the Islamic conquests decreased the number of h\uffaµz\. Along with the rapid increase in the number of non-Arab converts, the need for a religious instrument proved essential for promulgating the faith. These concerns prompted the compilation the Qur'an in a more reliable and permanent form. On the order of Abuµ Bakr, the Prophet's secretary (Zayd ibn Thaµbit) compiled the first complete copy of the Qur'an in the sequence denoted by the Prophet. In 651, during the caliphate of 'Uthmaµn, a meticulous method was followed to produce several exact copies of the full text for distribution to the territories.14 Within several years, writing the Qur'an became a prominent art that was subject to continued development throughout the ages with amazing artistic leaps. Among the earlier calligraphic variants, three major ones can be recognized: Maµ'il, characterized by the slanted vertical strokes of words; Mashq, characterized by extended horizontal strokes; and Naskh or inscriptional, characterized by its accommodation to the dexterity of the hand. The first variant did not last long, whereas the other two developed into the Kuµfic and the cursive families of scripts respectively, the two principal calligraphic scripts that dominated the writing of the Qur'an for centuries. Deriving its name from the city of Kuµfah, the newly established Islamic center of learning in Iraq, Kuµfic script reached maturity late in the eighth century and became what is known as original or standard Kuµfic. Its extended horizontal strokes, bold lines, and geometric tendency brought writing closer to the art of drawing.15 This original script was the first remarkable calligraphic achievement in response to the search for a hieratic form of lettering.16 This and other Kuµfic variants discussed below continued to embody mainly the Qur'anic text and, sporadically, formal state correspondence as opposed to general everyday writing.17 Original Kuµfic underwent gradual renewals and yielded, during the ninth century, the styles of eastern Kuµfic in the East and western Kuµfic in North Africa. According to Martin Lings, "both these are lighter and more dynamic and more potentially decorative than the parent script."18 In contrast to early Kuµfic, which focused on communicating the meaning of the message, later Kuµfic (from the tenth century on) admitted more and more decorative elements into the script. The result was a script flush with a wide variety of foliate, floral, and geometric manipulations of Arabic letters and words. Rivalling Kuµfic as a perpetuating family of scripts expressing the Qur'anic text was cursive calligraphy, which emerged from Naskh and other "curved and round" scripts practiced in the first decades of the Muslim era. In the words of Safadi, "it should be noted that the very early cursive scripts generally lacked elegance and discipline and were used mainly for secular purposes."19 As in Kuµfic, however, these scripts acquired various visual refinements over time. In addition, they were more readily accommodating to the constructional reformation of the Arabic script, which became necessary due to the presence of huge numbers of non-Arab converts who now had to learn the language of the Qur'an. The characteristics of cursive style absorbed with relative ease the attempts at solving two inherent problems: the absence of signs to help vocalize the script properly and the difficulty of distinguishing between different letters sharing the same character outline. Starting early in the Umayyad period, these two problems were alleviated respectively by introducing diacritical marks, such as fath\ah and d\ammah to help vocalization, and letter-pointing, such as dots above and below letters with the same outline. Through the inventiveness of accomplished calligraphers, cursive scripts gained some discipline and refinement. The utilization of the principle of the dimensional proportioning of letters to a reference standard produced revolutionary systems for visual balance and script order, which, in turn, produced new scripts in their own right. For example, the Nis\f (half) and Thuluth (one-third) scripts, developed during the Umayyad reign, based their size proportioning on a reference script called JalEµl (Grand). In the first half of the tenth century, during the 'Abbaµsid period, cursive scripts came under the scrutiny of the celebrated Ibn Muqlah. He "laid down a comprehensive system of basic calligraphic rules based on the rhombic dot as a unit of measurement" and also "redesigned the geometric forms of the letters and fixed their relative shape and size using the rhombic dot, the 'standard' Alif and the 'standard' circle."20 The strict rules of Ibn Muqlah, as well as further refinements made by Ibn al Bawwaµb, Yaµquµt, and others, resulted in the emergence of a family of cursive scripts, which developed over time and came to be known as al aqlaµm al sittah (the six pens). These six classical scripts encompassed the Thuluth, NaskhEµ, Muh\aqqaq, Rayh\aµnEµ, Riqa'Eµ, and TawqEµ' styles. The characteristics of each script defined its selective use in secular and religious works. For example, a Qur'anic suµrah would have its heading written in the monumental decorative Thuluth and the main text in Rayh\aµnEµ. Reflecting on the Qur'anic influence on the development of calligraphic arts, Welsh asserts that "the reasons for the . . . pervasiveness of the calligraphic arts lie in the central fact of Islamic culture-the Qur'an. For while Islamic calligraphy owes its historical development to human inventiveness and genius, it owes its origins to the revelation of Islam's holy book."21With an accent on ornamentation in the treatment of the Qur'an, Hillenbrand remarks that "the prestige of the Qur'an ensured that the ornament lavished on it was the best that the age could produce. The care which could be devoted to these Qur'ans beggars the imagination."22 The effect of the new faith on calligraphic development amounted to the level of a "true miracle."23 Besides Qur'anic calligraphy, prolific scribes continued from generation to generation to add masterpieces across the land and on a variety of surfaces, including those of the mosques, ecclesiastical buildings, ceramic objects, wood panels, clothes, carpets, and metal surfaces. The mastering of the fine writing produced even treatises on the subject.24 The artistic merits of Islamic calligraphy were so profound that they were recognized by external sources. The reaction of medieval Europe to calligraphy and objects from the lands of Islam testifies to that effect. For example, Islamic textiles, "despite their decidedly un-Christian inscriptions, were scissored and sewn into churchly vestments-by pious clerics and artisans who could see their beauty but could not read their Koranic inscriptions."25 Fine Kuµfic calligraphy adorned the coronation gown of a German emperor,26 and even the Crusaders admired and adapted Islamic art objects for use in churches.27 
|
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
